Grabbing water

P.M. Reis (1, 2) , J. Hure (3) , S. Jung (4, 5) , J.W.M. Bush (5) , Christophe Clanet (6)

1 MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States
3 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)
4 ESM - Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics [Blacksburg]
5 Department of Mathematics [MIT]
6 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique

We introduce a novel technique for grabbing water with a flexible solid. This new passive pipetting mechanism was inspired by floating flowers and relies purely on the coupling of the elasticity of thin plates and the hydrodynamic forces at the liquid interface. Developing a theoretical model has enabled us to design petal-shaped objects with maximum grabbing capacity. © 2010 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Mechanics [physics]; Fluid mechanics [physics.class-ph]; Engineering Sciences [physics]; Mechanics [physics.med-ph]; Fluids mechanics [physics.class-ph]

P.M. Reis, J. Hure, S. Jung, J.W.M. Bush, Christophe Clanet. Grabbing water. Soft Matter, 2010, 6 (22), pp.5705-5708. ⟨10.1039/c0sm00895h⟩. ⟨hal-01020667⟩